Cdn-Firearms Digest Tuesday, October 14 1997 Volume 02 : Number 031 cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca

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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 12:43:32 -0600 From: Dave Hammond <DHammond@novatel.ca> Subject: FW: USA - Bill Gates wants your guns

Don't like Bill Gates or his octopus like grip on the software market? Been looking for a reason to give Microsoft the finger and shop elsewhere? Well, here it is.........

by HUNTER T. GEORGE OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - A gun-control measure on the Washington ballot has turned into a Western shootout in this state, where nearly one out of five residents owns a pistol. In this gun battle, the two sides are armed with cash and soundbites. On one side is the state medical association, law enforcement leaders, religious groups, the state's largest teachers union and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, among other Seattle-area business leaders. They back the measure, which would require handgun owners to pass an exam or take an eight-hour safety course to get a license. It would also require trigger locks on all handguns sold or transferred in the state. On the other side are gun rights organizations, like the National Rifle Association, and police groups, which say the measure is an invasion of privacy, an infringement of the right to bear arms and a smokescreen for a hidden agenda: registration and eventual confiscation of handguns. ``What they're doing is basically using children and hiding behind a phony handgun safety ballot title,'' said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. ``These people don't want education. They want to make it very hard for people to buy a handgun or use one, and that's exactly what this initiative does.'' If voters OK the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot, Washington will pass some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. Only a dozen states require some sort of handgun permit or license, and just two - Massachusetts and Connecticut - have passed laws requiring trigger locks, but only at the retail level. Washington's would require them on all guns sold, even person to person. Nine of the nation's largest gun makers announced Thursday that they would provide childproof locks with all of their new handguns - - about 80 percent of those sold in the United States. President Clinton has pushed for legislation requiring the locks, but House and Senate committees rejected the provision earlier this year. No public polls on the measure have been released so far, but some of the richest people in the state back it: Gates gave $35,000; his father, lawyer William H. Gates, donated $150,000, and philanthropist Harriet Stimson Bullitt contributed $50,000. The safety requirements, they say, would be like taking a driver's test before getting a license. The goal is to reduce accidental shootings, particularly those involving children who find loaded guns in the home. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 30 people 19 or younger died in unintentional shootings in Washington state between 1991 and 1995. And 211 others were hospitalized for gunshot wounds. `I'm personally unwilling to tolerate that kind of carnage in our state,'' said Dr. Roy Farrell, campaign spokesman and a gun owner. ``Terrible tragedies happen that shouldn't happen if the gun was stored properly.''

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